


Shave

by bunnyfication



Category: Samurai Champloo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 14:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2113851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnyfication/pseuds/bunnyfication
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the adventure, they all take different paths. And then Mugen almost dies. (Almost, but not quite).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shave

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat inspired by this Japanese folktale: http://academia.issendai.com/foxtales/japan-shaved-by-foxes.shtml

It is said then when a man is near death, their life will unroll in front of their eyes, like a very fast picture scroll. Mugen had been near death many times and... well, perhaps it was true. Sometimes.

This time, though, it was like someone had cut the scroll to pieces, glued it together wrong and then scribbled all over it. And his head was spinning, just like when he was practicing that new technique... but no, he'd long since mastered it, hadn't he?

He saw faces, grotesque in the flickering, red light of a fire, their mouths dark pits as they opened, to tell strange meandering stories he couldn't quite follow. Too much sake, must have been. 

He knew he was saying something, bragging, to tell by the suddenly dubious expressions, but he couldn't quite hear his own words either. Everything was muffled, as if under the surface of water. Cool, deep water... he shivered, and it wasn't just the shadows flickering anymore, but the rough farmers faces themselves, melting into the black shadows.

Again, a light in the darkness, and he didn't know how long it had been. Who can tell time in the darkness, after all? 

The woman smiled and took a sip from her glass, full lips painted blood red by the wine and bent into a mischievous smile. She came to him, kimono slipping off her shoulders, her soft breasts pressing up against him. And behind him, there was another body, another set of arms holding him, and when he tilted his head back he saw a flash of dark hair on pale skin. "Jin, what're you..." he mumbles. He shouldn't be here, in this memory, and of course he is, because they are drinking with the strange woman with the strange wine... but then she presses her mouth to his, their tongues meeting and tangling up, and he is thoroughly distracted from everything else. Her mouth tastes sour, poisoned, and he pushes her away, but she has suddenly become preternaturally strong, holding on with ease.

"Oh, you must help me," she croons, "help me find a samurai who smells of sunflowers..." Her eyes are wide and earnest suddenly. Biting her lip, looking innocent and embarrassed but still oh so determined. 

"He's still too warm," the girl says, and he could tell her, no, he's so cold it's making him numb, or perhaps it's the poison. Again, she smiles, but her eyes are unseeing now, and sad, her face contorted by pain. 

He picks her up and holds her down to a fire, watching as if from afar as his hands push her into a fire pit, as her skin blackens and cracks, as she screams and begs for mercy. But there is no mercy in him, because he _is_ the fire, burning high. It hurts, but being alive often does. He laughs over the crackle of it, feeling gloriously alive, but suddenly his laughter rings into a silence. 

A quiet, darkly dressed crowd stands around him, their faces stiff and judging, and he is kneeling, his hands tied. "You were born a criminal, and so you shall die," one of them tells him, in a pretentious, booming voice, and he'd spit at him if his mouth wasn't as dry and gritty as a sandpit.

They grab his head, forcefully, and bring a blade to his throat...no, his hair, the bastards are shaving his hair for what he does not know. "Struggle and you'll loose an ear," a cool, laconic and faintly familiar voice tells him. Of course he doesn't pay it any mind, but the hands holding him in place are stronger, and when did he become so weak anyway?

It has become very dark again, and the waters are closing over his head, pressing down on his lungs. He tries to hold his breath, but it's no use, eventually he has to breathe in. It is easy, too easy to let the water in, salty like tears, too easy to let the black spots crowd his vision. It's a rather peaceful way to go, actually, if one likes that. He doesn't, but there appears little to be done about it.

Now he's out on the other side, wondering if those guys have even bothered to gather up once more... and then someone slaps him, and he draws breath, on reflex. It burns in his throat and lungs, and he coughs out the fluid lodged in there.

*

They'll tell him, later, that he had a high fewer. That he'd set himself against a bunch of highwaymen... not so much for the reward promised for them, but more because he'd been told they were unbeatable. Bullshit, of course, but they hadn't been too bad either, and there were a bit more than he'd guessed. One more, hidden in a tree, in fact. And while he managed to kill that last sneaky bastard too, he had some sort of poisoned blade... or maybe just rusty, Jin hazards a guess, cleaning his own sword in a prissy way. 

It was just lucky they came across him, Fuu says. And perhaps it's even true. Stranger things have happened, after all.

When he first wakes up, though, Mugen doesn't know any of that. For a moment he thinks he's back in that little shack, still recovering from the fight with the crazy brothers. And the much shorter but nevertheless important duel with Jin. Somehow, even without seeing him, he knows Jin is there too. A true fighter can sense his equal, after all. That, and Jin has a habit of snoring, in these wheezy little huffs that Mugen had lomg since learned to recognize. 

Mugen stares at the ceiling above him, and while most wooden hovels look pretty much the same, he spent enough time looking at _that_ one to know this one has a different grain to it. And when he turns his head, he finds Fuu sleeping on his other side, her kimono in disarray and straw sticking out of her hair. 

He stares at her uncommonly open cleavage, thinking it seems a bit weird to do so but not weird enough to stop, until that squirrel of hers pops out from there and chitters at him reproachfully. He eyeballs back at it halfheartedly, and it gives a little squeak and disappears back, causing Fuu to giggle in her sleep and turn to the other side.

Typical. 

He thinks he should get up and ask what the hell those two are doing here, but he's feeling drowsy and lazy, and not too hot or cold which seems like something new. Although his head feels rather odd...

They wake up to his cursing. Fuu tells him he's being childish, it's only _hair_ and it'll grow back, although he does look rather funny all bald like that, and he suggests they try shaving her hair too and see how she likes it. Jin doesn't take any part in the ensuing argument, merely looks amused in that special way he has when his expression doesn't change at all. 

And really, it all shouldn't feel so _right_ , all of them together down to the flying rat. After all, Mugen has spent most of his life on his own, fighting for no one and nothing but himself, right up to the point he was conned into following an annoying little girl along with an even more annoying man. Why should he have missed that, after they completed their little mission and went each their own way.

Really, it's not at all fitting for a guy like him. 

But then again, he never did give a damn over what was fitting, now did he?


End file.
